Katharina Kepler

Katharina Kepler (* 1546 in Eltingen near Leonberg ; † April 13, 1622 ) was the mother of the imperial astronomer Johannes Kepler . She was accused in 1615 during a witch hunt in one of the most famous Wurttemberg witch trials and was acquitted in 1621, not least through the efforts of her well-known son.

Life

Katharina Kepler, née Guldenmann, grew up in Eltingen. Her father Melchior Guldenmann was the landlord and mayor . She had an aunt who was later burned as a "witch". On May 15, 1571, Katharina married Heinrich Kepler, whom she probably met in her father's inn. Seven months after the wedding, she had her first child, Johannes. The relationship between the couple was always tense. The in-laws refused Katharina; her father-in-law Sebald Kepler (1519–1596) was mayor of Weil der Stadt and considered it a bad match for his son.

In 1574 Heinrich Kepler ran away from this tense atmosphere for the first time and became a mercenary in Belgium. In the summer of 1575 Katharina Kepler followed him. The two came back home and bought a house in Leonberg. In January 1589 Heinrich Kepler finally left his family after 18 years of marriage. He is said to have died a terrible death near Augsburg. The 42-year-old Katharina Kepler was left alone with her children Margaretha and Christoph. A total of four of their children survived: their first-born Johannes, Heinrich, Christoph, who later became a tin caster in Leonberg, and their daughter Margarete, who married the pastor of Heumaden .

Witch trial

During his tenure (1613–1629), the Leonberger Vogt Lutherus Einhorn brought charges against fifteen women on suspicion of witchcraft and had eight of them executed with death sentences. He acted in accordance with the Leonberger city authorities and large parts of the population. They called for rigorous crackdown on witches. In 1615 Einhorn initiated the witch trial against Katharina Kepler, which took place in Leonberg and Güglingen in 1620/21 . She narrowly escaped death by fire at the stake. The process ended in an acquittal.

After a business dispute with the wife of a glazier, Ursula Reinbold, she accused Katharina Kepler of giving her a bitter drink, which she was sick with, and in 1615 reported Katharina to the ducal under-bailiff of Leonberg with a demand for compensation for pain suffered . Christoph Kepler sued the Reinbolds for defamation, Johannes Kepler wanted to bring his mother to Linz for protection , but she did not accept the offer. In October 1616 she went to Stuttgart for a hearing and passed eight-year-old Burga Haller by the arm at the city gate. The child screamed that the “witch” had dealt her a paralyzing blow, which meant being caught in the act of “magic damage” in the act. Katharina was immediately arrested and interrogated, but released again. In March 1618, the Reinbolds filed their claim for damages, in which they demanded 1000 guilders for the suffering caused to Ursula by the "witch's potion" plus reimbursement of court costs. The Constitutio Criminalis Carolina of 1532 only made magic a punishable offense if it had caused (personal) harm. Johannes Kepler took care of his mother's defense. It took another year and a half for the 280-page indictment to be completed and submitted by the clerk Nördlinger. It was unusual for a defense attorney to be admitted in a witch trial. A legal opinion from the University of Tübingen came to his aid, which probably goes back to his college friend Besold . In the meantime he brought her to Linz in Upper Austria in December 1616, but she returned and Katharina was arrested on August 7, 1620 in the rectory in Heumaden and taken to Güglingen; the embarrassing court day took place on August 20, 1621. According to the protocol, Katharina appeared "unfortunately with the assistance of her son Johann Kepler, Mathematici". Two strong men guarded the seventy-three year old woman day and night. The defendant and her relatives had to pay for the costs. She was in chains for 14 months and the files of her trial piled up in mountains.

When she was finally shown the instruments of torture to force her to confess, she stood firm: “She said you do what you want with her, and if you pulled every vein out of her body, she would know but nothing to confess ... she also wanted to die on it; After her death God will reveal that injustice and violence have been done to her ”. In October 1621 her son Johannes Kepler was able to enforce her release. Katharina Kepler died six months later, in April 1622, probably in Roßwälden . Their burial place has not been documented.

Aftermath

Katharina Kepler is one of the main characters in Paul Hindemith's opera Die Harmonie der Welt .

Helmut Jasbar musically processed the story of Katharina and Johannes Kepler in the musical story Ewigkeit für Beginners in 2017 .

Web links

• Article "Württemberg, Duchy - witch hunts"
• Illustration of the file extract from the process

literature

• Kurt Baschwitz: Witches and Witches Trials , Bertelsmann Verlag, Munich, 1990, pp. 252–260.
• Berthold Sutter: The witch trial against Katharina Kepler , [ed. by the Kepler-Gesellschaft Weil der Stadt eV together with the Heimatverein Weil der Stadt], Weil der Stadt, Kepler-Gesellschaft, 1979.
• James A. Connor: Kepler's witch: An astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother , San Francisco 2004 ISBN 0-06-052255-0 .
• Ulinka Rublack: The Astronomer & the Witch: Johannes Kepler's Fight for His Mother , Oxford 2015, ISBN 0198736770

See also

• Anna Murschel